Tidings: What's New at PerlMonks

Your site maintainers are constantly improving the appearance and functions of PerlMonks
to make your experience here the best it can be.
To find out what has changed recently, or since the last time you logged in, peruse the headlines below.
Also browse recent PerlMonks Discussions for a deeper view into what's in the pipeline for PerlMonks.

If you have questions about anything you read here, you may ask about it in the Chatterbox.
If it's an issue of weightier import, you might consider posting a PMD.

Timezone display restored in timestampsNov 09, 2016 at 18:00 UTC

After fixing the Apache configuration and installing the relevant module (Env::C) in the mainline Perl distribution, the timezone settings are re-enabled and the display of timestamps now reflects the settings again.

Timezone display broken in timestampsNov 02, 2016 at 18:00 UTC

In a bout of cowboy-editing, the code base was made 5.22 compliant. This involved disabling some
timezone setting so if you experience some timestamps in the wrong timezone this is likely caused
by the change. That change is supposed to be temporary until the relevant module (Env::C) is loaded
from the appropriate location again.

Writeup editing is now separate from display and votingJun 13, 2016 at 12:00 UTC

The "edit" form has been removed from the main display view of your posts, and pushed off into a separate edit page. Now if you visit one of your writeups you won't see an edit form right there, but you will see an 'Edit' link in the upper right.

This change was already in effect for a little while in a few sections (Obfu, Poetry, Meds...) and has now been rolled out to all sections.

The "root" writeup of a displayed thread is now enclosed in an html DIV element, with a distinct id: <div id="writeup">.
This DIV encloses everything from the reputation vote/display bar down to the bar which says "Comment on ... : Send private /msg ...".
It does not include the "Replies are listed ..." bar.

New notifications for moderation/consideration actionsMar 04, 2016 at 12:00 UTC

The system now sends notification messages upon certain additional events, in a manner very similar to how monks are notified when someone replies one of their nodes. By popular request:

If a writeup gets reaped, the monk who flagged the node for consideration receives a message stating that fact. (The idea for this feature arose in this thread.)

If a janitor edits the content of a writeup (title, body, etc.), or if a moderator moves a writeup to a different section, the author of the writeup receives a notification stating that fact. (The idea for this feature arose in this thread.)

Certain other janitorial actions are not (yet) included in this notification scheme -- for example, reparenting a reply, or promoting a reply to root post. Anonymous Monk will never receive notifications, since Anonymous Monk has no message inbox.

message opcode does not use replyto parameter anymoreOct 20, 2015 at 20:47 UTC

This change affects only those who access PerlMonks via URLs crafted in some way other than scraping the site;
if you only use PerlMonks through its normal web user interface, you can ignore this.
This change alters the "API" for sending private messages.

To send a public or private message, submit a HTTP request (either GET or POST should work) with a query parameter op=message, to invoke the message opcode.
The Chatterbox, the Message Inbox, and all other ways to send messages are implemented to use this opcode.
In the case of private messaging, this opcode had two ways of specifying the recipient.
One way was to reply to a specific inbox message, by adding a replyto=[msgid] parameter;
the other was to send to a specific user, by name, by adding a sendto=[username] parameter.
With this change, the first way (replyto=[msgid]) is gone;
and a new way is added, for sending to a specific user by ID: the sendto_opt parameter.
Code should now use only ;sendto=[username] or ;sendto_opt=[userid] for sending private messages, and not replyto.

Reaped Nodes (and their branches) are no longer shown in threads and Super SearchAug 10, 2015 at 18:00 UTC

As of 2015-07-27, you will no longer see reaped nodes, nor any nodes below them in the "tree" of replies, in any threaded view. This is now default behavior, but logged-in monks can override this by checking the "Show Reaped" checkboxes in Newest Nodes Settings. Note that Anonymous Monk has no way to override this behavior, and now will never see any reaped node, except when landing directly on a reaped node's page.

Also, reaped nodes will now no longer be included in Super Search results, unless you explicitly include author NodeReaper in your search criteria. As above, this behavior is overrideable by the NN Settings variables.

Historically, comments (aka replies; technically notes) were shown below posts ordered chronologically, with the first (i.e. oldest) reply at the top, just below the post, down to the newest at the bottom.
By popular demand, the default note ordering is now 'Best First' -- the reply with the highest reputation at the top, worst reputation at the bottom.
This change primarily affects, and was primarily intended for, visitors.
It may also affect logged-in users who have never specified a Note Ordering in their User Settings.

Also, the reply ordering in effect is shown below a note, along with the "Comment on..." link. (It is not shown if there are no replies, however.)